The Rise of Populism and Its Impact on Democratic Institutions

Abstract

The re-emergence of populism across the world has sparked major concerns on what this may portend on the well-being and sustainability of democratic institutions. This paper examines the emergence of populism in some of the major democracies and the extent to which they have affected fundamental democratic principles of the rule of law, independence of the judiciary, freedom of the press and civil liberties. Based on the combined mixed-methods design of qualitative case studies of several countries, such as Hungary, Brazil and United States, the Philippines, and quantitative analysis of global democratic indices between 2000 and 2024, the research synthesizes the findings on the two questions.
Data was analysed on survey among more than 1200 political analysts and stakeholders in the civil society and on Freedom House and Economist Intelligence Unit reports. The results indicate that the institutional independence decreased by an average of 27 percent in countries that are affected with a strong populist wave, the press freedom indicator has gone down by 32 percent, and the civic space has reduced by 21 percent. Populists tend to destroy the democratic principles, centralise the power, and discredit the court system, as well as weaken checks and balances.
The researcher concludes that populism may have a short-term effect of bringing the people behind it in terms of having their real grievances answered, but in the long-run populism is found to have the negative effect of weakening the strength of democratic institutions. The study proposes to reduce these consequences by means of enhancing legal protection, development of civic education, establishment of independent media and an independent judicial system. These are the necessary steps toward the maintenance of democratic resilience against the level of populist discourse and authoritarianism.